The Question of Greed
 

Centrally, the question is this: is greed good? Is it a virtue or a vice?

Pro: Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms: greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind. Greed with not only save you, but any other malfunctioning corporation.

Con: The value of happiness outweighs greed. Happiness is the only end we value for itself. Thus once happiness is obtained, we need nothing more. When we grow a compulsion to have something more than what we need, then we are no longer happy because we are searching for something else, we are not complete in the psyke of the greedy. Ergo, happiness outweighs greed.

Discuss in a formal fasion, give me pros and cons, not little phrases or additives.
If you want to refute or argue against someone's pro or con, do so in a reply fasion.

It seems like you are going about this question the wrong way...

Looks to me as if you are phrasing the question with greed and happiness at polar opposites to each other, which isn't normally the case. I may simply be misunderstanding.

If not, however perhaps the more pressing question is:
Is it possible to separate happiness from greed?

It would seem that in human history there has never really been happines without some kind of greed, a greed for life, or a greed for material things. Lust is nothing more than greed, and the way that the human race has become so prevalent on this planet is through that form of greed.

In that vein,

Pro: Greed drives the Human condition, pushing our society forward, making us want more than we have.

Con: Greed makes it impossible for us to achieve a state of contentment, no happiness, but no saddness as well.

Feel free to disagree.

Reguarding your Con. If you are greedy, you are in a state of displeasement becuse you cannot have "enough." You must always have more. I agree that if you are in a perpetual state of greed then you are unable to by completely happy. But you are also sad in the fact that you can always have more.

first you must define the word greed. by definition greed means excessive desire for something.
pro: many of the things we enjoy everyday came from people that many would say are greedy.
con: if your excessively pursuing one desire it doesn't leave much time to pursue all the other things that make us whole.

Greed is an addiction to acquisition, or an unchecked obsession with making one's life state as secure as possible. The more stuff you get, the more cushioning. It is not a good thing. Also, saying greed has propelled "progress" depends on how you view our progress. Depending on where you come from and what you do for a living, civilization is either an amazing success, an empty mess, or immimenently headed for self-destruction. It was creativity and determination that brought us where we are, in my opinion, and greed is a defect, a symptom of macrocosmic flaws in human nature that will probably always plague us.

I think that one can be determined to do ones best in life with out being greedy. for me geed has no pros, only cons. It creates competition and sets people back. Greed, for me, is the evil that comes out of determined people.

i guess i am just restating what johnny Rotten said so ill stop now.

Well, Aristotle writes that virtue is a mean between two extremes -- for example, courage is a mean between cowardice and foolhardiness. Let us suppose, then, that greed is a virtue. What would the two extremes be? On one side we could have avariciousness, or too much greed. But on the other side, what would we have? Not trying to acquire enough? But that hardly seems like a vice. Therefore, greed is not a virtue.

An excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth


with that definition I see this

Pros: The base of democracy, if you want it bad enough you have chances to get more and more based off the amount of work to put toward the task.

Cons: You are Bill Gates, with enough money to buy every person in the US healthcare for upwards of 10 years.

Presumably, it boils down to a question of personal gratification or the betterment of a commonwealth. Whether with your greed you choose to satisfy your hunger for more. Or, as Menoman stated, choose to fraternize your money to the betterment of your bretheren.

Now, which would you pick?

My point of view is greed is bad, that we should live our lives for others, even though it may be more logical to live for ourselves. To me, greed is possibly the most terrifying thing there is. Not simple monetary greed, but emotional greed as well. Greed sneaks itself into all things, selfish and selfless and can't always be easily identified. Greed is... just plain scary.

Isn't greed part of survival?

Part of what makes it scary.

How is greed part of survival? If greed was necessary for survival, only the greedy would survive.

Given this definition of greed, who's to say what one deserves? To me, that seems just as subjective as the concept of greed itself.

Also, just because Bill Gates could buy everyone healthcare for a while, does that mean that he should? Does this make altruism the opposite of greed?

Regarding the "evolutionary spirit" of greed:

Without cooperation and relying on community humans would be extinct. I think that social darwinism as a philosophy has gone too far to describe the nature of human existence and "evolution".

I don't know what the opposite of greed is. Some might call it generosity, some might call it equity, some might call it temperance. So I don't really know how to approach this issue further.

Happiness is found is many places. I have a friend who finds happiness in the pursuit of possessions. He appears very greedy to me. He sees it as a "contest" in a sense and enjoys the competition. We've talked about whether he is content and whether he is happy. He is happy - not content. He has found happiness IN greed. Does this make sense?

Evey person's happiness is different. Greed is a desire while happiness is an emotion. Greed is survival carried to the extreme. Survival is simply acquiring what you need. Greed is acquiring more than you need - (courtesy of Webster's) excessive or reprehensible acquisitiveness. Greed and happiness are not directly connected or directly contradictory either. They can be related only by greed being the means to the end of happiness. Greed is only one of many paths to happiness. In my opinion, it's not an exceptionally effective path either.

Greed is a byproduct of unlimited wants. Most animals will display this. Racoons can be trapped bya shiny object lying in a narrow tunnel because they refuse to let go of it, even though the object does nothing to help the racoon. The problem arises when an symbol is mistaken for a necessity. Money by itself does nothing for us, and a lot of people hoard it without spending it by thinking the money itself is necessary.

To me, greed stems from the illusion that "there is not enough". There is not enough money, there is not enough time, there is not enough love, there is not enough food, etc...

What is enough? When does one have "enough" money? Obviously, we need a certain amount of food to survive - there are things that we physically and emotionally HAVE to have for survival. Greed implies excess.

Think of examples of Jesus. Not that I'm religious mind you, at least in the common sense. But here's a guy that had it all figured out. "Give us this day, our daily bread". Just give me what I need to survive, and I'll be happy. He didn't NEED a sports car to be happy (not that they were available) but you can see my point.

I don't personally live by what I'm saying, I like having nice things, lots of money, a big house, etc...but I can tell you truthfully - and don't take it as boasting...I make well over six figures a year, have PLENTY of money saved, no debt, a nice house a beautiful girlfriend, etc. But none of these things, by themselves are what truly make me happy. No, I don't want to give them up because they're "comfortable"...But to answer your question:

I think greed is a manifestation of our desire for happiness. That is the necessity (don't know about racoons and shiny objects...) of feeling happy. We hoard things in our search for the things that make us happy. I don't know if there is a universal list of things that make humans happy, I suppose it depends on the individual.

Look at mankind and how must consume everything on earth to survive. We're not on top of the food chain because we want to share.

We're not on the top of the food chain because we are greedy. Greed doesn't get you to the top of the food chain, being adaptable/the best suited to your surroundings does. If you define greed as one or more members of a species consuming more than they need to survive than i'm pretty certain that greed would actually be detrimental to the progress of any species in terms of evolution.